Strings for musical instruments are manufactured in a multitude of types, made of different materials and material compositions. The type of string is designed, in accordance with the specific application, for the tone range and the musical instrument in question. To fulfill the musical requirements, different materials can be used for the manufacture of a string. Musical strings of particularly high quality are made of gut.
Gut strings for musical instruments are usually made of the guts of hoofed animals, mostly of sheeps, and are used as a rule in plucked or bowed string instruments. However, the fact that the strings are stretched on the instrument under a certain tension and that they are hit, plucked or bowed when the instrument is played, results in high wear of the musical string. Therefore, nowadays, gut strings are usually manufactured in the form of so-called gut core strings, in which an inner, carrying area of the string, also called the core, consisting of gut, is provided with an external spinning made of poly plastic, such as nylon, or metal, such as aluminum and titanium. The external spinning can in particular be provided for giving the string sufficient mass, in order to generate also relatively deep tones.
In general, such strings based on gut possess good tonal properties. However, in the course of time, such strings show relatively great changes in tone, due to their water-absorbing capacity. Consequently, the string has to be re-tuned relatively frequently. Strings with a nylon-based coating have, furthermore, the disadvantage that the water-absorbing capacity of nylon (absorption of humidity of nylon: ˜3-4%) is also very high and, in addition, the expansion properties of nylon are poor.
The re-tensioning of the musical strings, in particular for tuning the musical instruments by tensioning the string, and the degree of wear through the bowing of the string may lead to the formation of fissures inside the string and possibly even to a rupture of the entire string. In addition, there are aging phenomena of the string material used. Therefore, for intensely used orchestra instruments, it may be necessary relatively frequently to exchange a string, to prevent a deterioration of the specific musical characteristics of the instrument, in particular the quality of tone and sound. In view of the possibly long playing-in times of the strings, it is, however, desirable to reduce the frequency of string exchanges.